Making modifications or enhancements to software running in a live computer system requires careful planning, especially if the system is a large transaction processing system such as VisaNet™, which processes over one hundred million financial transactions (e.g., credit card transactions) per day. Typically, a set of software modification projects are grouped into an install plan which has a projected install date. On the install date, all of the modification projects in the install plan are released into an active or production system at the same time.
Each software modification project typically adds or modifies a particular feature. An example of a software modification project may be a feature to add a new transaction type such that the computer system can handle prepaid card transactions in addition to credit/debit card transactions.
In turn, each software modification project typically affects multiple software applications. For each affected software application, a set of test cases are developed and tested by an assigned tester against the software application to ensure that there are no bugs. When all of the applications in each of the projects in the install plan are fully tested, the projects are released into a live system at the designated install date.
Often, administrators, managers and software testers need to track the progress of testing the software modification projects of a particular install or a particular project within the install to assess where the potential problems lie and whether the projects can be released by the designated install date. Traditionally, the manager would either call or email individual lead testers to report the progress of testing the software modification projects. When all information has been gathered, the manager would then prepare a test progress report summarizing the test status of all projects. As can be appreciated, this process of tracking the progress of testing is very time consuming. Moreover, as some testers may be tardy in responding to the manager's request for status, the report may not represent the true testing status at a particular time.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a system and method for more efficiently and more accurately tracking the progress of testing software modification projects.